Eating vs. Dining — What's the Difference?

Eating (also known as consuming) is the ingestion of food, typically to provide a heterotrophic organism with energy and to allow for growth. Animals and other heterotrophs must eat in order to survive — carnivores eat other animals, herbivores eat plants, omnivores consume a mixture of both plant and animal matter, and detritivores eat detritus.

The activity of eating a meal

Suitable for being eaten, especially without cooking

To have dinner.

Used in the ingestion of food, as at the table

To give dinner to; entertain at dinner

Bred to be eaten.

Eating dinner as a social function.

Suitable to be eaten without being cooked.

Entertaining someone to dinner.

The act of tasking food; the act of consuming or corroding.

Present participle of dine

Something fit to be eaten; food; as, a peach is good eating.

The act of eating dinner

The act of consuming food